"I never forget his eyes. Very bold eyes."
"They could be soft, macheppa."
"True. It is time thou dressed for the ball at the Custom-house, niñita."
Ysabel leaned forward, her lips parting. A man was coming up the hill. He was gaunt; he was burnt almost black. Something bulged beneath his serape.
Doña Juana found herself suddenly in the middle of the room. Ysabel darted through the only door, locking it behind her. The indignant dueña also recognized the man, and her position. She trotted to the door and thumped angrily on the panel; sympathetic she was, but she never could so far forget herself as to permit a young girl to talk with a man unattended.
"Thou shalt not go to the ball to-night," she cried shrilly. "Thou shalt be locked in the dark room. Thou shalt be sent to the rancho. Open! open! thou wicked one. Madre de Dios! I will beat thee with my own hands."
But she was a prisoner, and Ysabel paid no attention to her threats. The girl was in the sala, and the doors were open. As De la Vega crossed the corridor and entered the room she sank upon a chair, covering her face with her hands.
He strode over to her, and flinging his serape from his shoulder opened the mouth of a sack and poured its contents into her lap. Pearls of all sizes and shapes—pearls black and pearls white, pearls pink and pearls faintly blue, pearls like globes and pearls like pears, pearls as big as the lobe of Pio Pico's ear, pearls as dainty as bubbles of frost—a lapful of gleaming luminous pearls, the like of which caballero had never brought to doña before.
For a moment Ysabel forgot her love and her lover. The dream of a lifetime was reality. She was the child who had cried for the moon and seen it tossed into her lap.
She ran her slim white fingers through the jewels. She took up handfuls and let them run slowly back to her lap. She pressed them to her face; she kissed them with little rapturous cries. She laid them against her breast and watched them chase each other down her black gown. Then at last she raised her head and met the fierce sneering eyes of De la Vega.